


we're not celebrities, we spark and fade

by DianaSolaris



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Banter, Domestic Violence, Drug Abuse, Flirting, Humanstuck, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Trans Male Character, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 05:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14742848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DianaSolaris/pseuds/DianaSolaris
Summary: Karkat's luck is still going strong. His manager got him a new band member who plays the wrong instrument, the new member looks like the Lollipop Guild fired him for being too cutesy, and to top it all off, he still can't quite shake the ghost of his (alive, asshole) ex off his back.It's a bad day.





	we're not celebrities, we spark and fade

It was just their damn luck, thought Karkat with a fury he hadn't even thought himself capable of, that not only were they  _ still  _ short a drummer on the day before their tour was due to start -

 

- _ no,  _ that hadn't been enough for the horrorterror that had it out for him- his manager had proved his total, utter, terrific incompetence by hiring a replacement who played the wrong instrument.

 

“Explain to me, Nitram, in teeny tiny words so my brain can comprehend the staggering infinite realms of your stupidity. In what world does drummer equal-” Karkat flailed his arms in the intruder’s direction. “Are your brain cells only large enough to comprehend ‘hits things and makes noise’ because if so, I’d be happy to give you a leftover honking red nose and let you go wild!”

 

“I think, maybe, possibly, you’re exaggerating a bit?”

 

“I think maybe you need a crash course in the difference between a drummer and a freakin’ pianist! What’s he going to do, smash the keys real hard and hope nobody can tell the fucking difference?” Karkat gesticulated at the man in the corner, who upon being pointed at, just grinned and proceeded to whistle something idly.

 

“I think maybe you should at least, um, learn his name? Talk to him? I mean, it can’t be-”

 

“If you say ‘that bad’, Nitram, I will garrotte you with a guitar string and you will wish your guttersnipe mother had never pushed you out of the foul-smelling cavern of her stomach.”

 

“I don’t think babies come out of the stomach,” the drummer-that-was-a-pianist chimed in again.

 

Karkat jabbed a finger at him. “You do NOT have permission to speak.”

 

Tavros took a deep breath. He looked on the verge of tears, but to be fair, he always looked like that. “Without Gamzee, it’s just you and Terezi. And Terezi likes him.”

 

“Terezi likes anybody who isn’t a double-crossing freak of nature.”

 

“Which is a point in my favour, I think!”

 

“What part of ‘don’t talk’ keeps escaping you?”

“At least, I don’t know, take him to Waffle House and interview him or something? What can it hurt, right?”

 

Karkat fumed, trying to come up with a response. To be fair. To be  _ entirely  _ fair. It wasn’t like anybody played the piano, either. 

 

He turned on the not-drummer. “You. Name.”

 

“Me. John.”

 

“...Twat. Come on. We’re going to Waffle House.”

 

“What if I don’t like waffles?”

 

“Then you’ll have pancakes.”

 

“Er, alright.” Beat. “Is this a date? Because I’m not dressed for it-”

 

_ “Do you want an interview or not?” _

 

_ \--- _

 

Karkat hadn’t originally played guitar. In fact, it was sort of a wonder that he’d ever gotten into music in the first place, given that his first instrument had actually been a very sad-sounding clarinet.

 

Band was required for grade nines. That was all.

 

So he showed up every morning and tooted miserably on the clarinet in the back - the days where he could even get a sound out of it. 

 

“You look bored.”

 

Karkat looked up at the kid next to him with more concern than was probably necessary. Anybody who showed up to high school every day in plaid pyjama pants, Bob Marley t-shirts and full KISS-style makeup was either too confused or too dedicated to coming across as such to be genuinely threatening, but actually being  _ spoken  _ to by him was kind of like talking to an Escher painting.

 

Also, he played sax. Which was really just the absurdist cherry on top of the walking post-ironic impressionist satire that was Gamzee Makara. 

 

“...Yes,” he replied carefully. That was a safe answer.

 

“You mean, you agree you look bored, that I think you look bored, or you are bored? Come on, man. Clarity. It’s important.”

 

Karkat glared at Gamzee, picked up his clarinet and tried to give an earth-shattering toot.

 

Nothing happened. Closer inspection revealed that his reed had snapped right down the middle.

 

Gamzee was trying very hard not to laugh. “Want an easier instrument?”

 

Karkat eyed the saxophone nervously. “I don’t trust your definition of easier.”

 

“Okay, do you want an instrument that doesn’t look like you’re giving it the saddest,  _ saddest  _ blowjob in the history of blowjobs every time it goes near your mouth?”

 

Karkat put the clarinet down. “Start talking, funny man.”

 

\----

 

He couldn’t help comparing John to Gamzee. It wasn’t on purpose. You spent eight years with a person and they became the bar - the standard for everybody else.

 

Course, if this interview didn’t end with punches getting thrown and/or the cops getting called, the bar was officially passed. But John was too quiet. He let loose with his quips when necessary. It made him nervous. Whereas Gamzee was always clicking a pen, or tapping his fingers - it had been relaxing, whether or not it was a symptom of Gam’s inability to let his brain slow down.

 

“I feel like I should open this interview with a point of clarification,” John finally piped up.

 

“Point of clarification,” Karkat mocked. “Order your damn waffles.”

 

“Oh, uh, sure.” John did so, smiled at the waitress, then once she was gone, glanced back at Karkat with a nervous grin. His eyes were  _ very  _ blue. “...I play more than one instrument.”

 

“...Your point?”

 

“I play both piano  _ and  _ drums.”

 

Karkat stared back at John. Then he slumped onto the table, burying his hands in his black hair with a growl. “Of course. Of  _ course  _ you do. You’re also apparently put on this earth to make me embarrass myself worse than if I’d shit my pants on stage. Is it too early to tell you to get lost?”

 

“We should eat our waffles first.”

 

“ _ Fuck  _ your waffles.”

 

“No thanks. Not my favourite kind of cream.”

 

Karkat lifted his middle finger and pointed it straight at John. “Less wisecracking. More trying to impress me.”

 

John chuckled and took a sip of his orange juice. “What do you want to know?’

 

“ _ How  _ many instruments do you fucking play?”

 

“Piano, drums, cello, viola and a tiny bit of electric bass. Jade taught me, but my arms are too short.”

 

“So what you’re telling me is you escaped from the London Philharmonic and you’re seeking sanctuary.”

 

“Do I  _ sound  _ British?”

 

“A bit, yeah.”

 

“I’m from New Jersey!”

 

“...Eesh. You should have gone with the British thing.  _ Especially  _ during a job interview.”

 

John scowled, sucking on his straw. “I can’t tell if this is an interview or a hazing.”

 

“I like to combine the two, for peak efficiency.” 

 

“Oh, look, a tasty distraction!” John grabbed at the plate of waffles and stuck his tongue out at Karkat. “At this rate, I don’t know if I want to work for  _ you. _ ”

 

“There’s no weaseling out of it now, piano boy. Tav likes you. That means if you turn him down you’ll get late night drunk emails pleading with you to reconsider and that he didn’t mean to break your heart.”

 

John raised an eyebrow. “...Does he actually do that?”

 

“God, no. He just drunk-dials Terezi. So, in short,  _ please  _ don’t.”

 

“Does that mean I have the job?”

 

“Finish your damn waffles.”

John dug in, and Karkat took a moment to sit back in the booth and take in the kid in his entirety. He wasn’t  _ that  _ much younger than him and Terezi, but the square-framed glasses perched on his nose made his entire face look rounder and brighter. They didn’t hide the bags under his eyes, though. Another insomniac, then, or…

 

\----

 

It hadn’t been a big deal, at first. Everybody in the band scene did drugs here and there. It wasn’t like it was anything bad like coke or meth.  _ Those,  _ Karkat would have cared more about.

 

But sitting on the floor of Terezi’s house, the night before they set off on their tour, seemed like a bad time to try salvia for the first time. “It’s like weed, but magic mushrooms,” Gamzee had said. Which was the least helpful thing Karkat had ever heard.

 

Terezi went first, sliding off her bright red shades and cocking a grin at both of them before taking a puff on the cigarette. “I don’t feel anything,” she complained.

 

“Give it a moment.”

 

“I-” She froze, eyes drifting off to nowhere at all, as unfocused as usual. Karkat checked the clock. Two minutes passed - then three - then four -

 

“-OUT!” the word burst from her lips as if it had been sitting there the whole time, and her hands clutched at the carpet. 

 

Karkat flailed backwards, but Gamzee wasn’t perturbed. Instead, he leaned forward. “Rezi? You with us?”

 

She exhaled, breathing ragged, then closed her eyes. “...Yeah. Yep. Okay. Whoo. Uh. How long have been sitting here?”

 

“Five minutes,” Gamzee said with a smile.

 

“Five-  _ what. _ No.”

 

“For real. Isn’t it great?”

 

Terezi laughed, shaking her head. “You do you, my man. But that’s, uh, that’s a one-time trip for me. Fuck. I need sleep.”

 

“Stick around for me and KK. It’s fifteen minutes, max.” Gamzee offered the blunt to Karkat, who looked down at it, and then sideways at Terezi. Gamzee might not have noticed, but he could see the beads of sweat at her forehead, and the little panicked flickers of her pupils.

 

“I’m gonna pass.”

 

“What? C’mon, KK, it’s supposed to be a bonding thing!”

 

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

 

Gamzee frowned, then shrugged. He was better dressed than usual tonight, loose tie hanging over a white Black Sabbath shirt and black slacks. His hair was still a mess, though, and the tie didn’t match the three or four jelly bands around his wrist. “Alright. Bottoms up, chums!”

 

Karkat looked on with a sense of dread as Gamzee took the hit of salvia, smoke wreathing his face. Suddenly he wished there were more lights on. Doing drugs in the dark by candlelight had sounded fun at the time. Badass.  _ Cool. _

 

Gamzee’s eyes went dark and flat, as if the light had just been switched off. Inch by inch, he slouched forward, until Karkat reached forward and plucked the still-smouldering blunt from his fingers so it wouldn’t hit the floor.

 

“G-Gam?” Karkat asked quietly. “Hey, uh. Dude. Dude, are you alright?”

 

“Give him a few minutes,” Terezi murmured. “It’s dark down there.”

 

“Down there?”

 

“It’s… a long way down. Or up. For some people it’s up.” Terezi turned her attention back to Gamzee. 

 

Then, slowly, Gamzee began to laugh. It was quiet at first, breathy. Karkat sighed in relief. “Hey, you’re back-”

 

Gamzee kept laughing, Louder, and louder, and sharper and sharper. Then he raised his head, his eyes still dark and flat, and stared Karkat right in the eyes, and let out a scream.

 

Karkat ran. A few minutes later, the knock came at the closet door. “He’s awake,” came Terezi’s voice. “He doesn’t remember anything.”

 

He opened the closet door, and shrugged off the hand she tried to lay on his arm. “Remember what?”

 

They had a tour to get ready for.

 

\----

 

“Just checking before I even waste any more time on you,” Karkat said after a while.

 

“Mm?”

 

“Drugs.”

 

“Uh?”

 

“I mean, do you do ‘em, how often, and what are they?”

 

John shook his head. “Not at all. I mean, I drink. And I smoke weed when it’s  _ there.  _ But it makes my head feel weird.”

 

Weird. Alright. “Okay,” Karkat mumbled, and grabbed the pile of papers John had next to him on the table.

 

“H-hey!”

 

“Alright, so you’ve played for… Sburb, the Derse Dreamers, some boring-ass quartet in New York... “ Karkat paused. “That’s a lot of bands. In not that much time. You can’t find steady work?” He left the rest unsaid - unusually for him - that there was usually a  _ reason. _

 

“Just...never quite what I wanted,” John answered nervously. He’d stopped picking at his waffles, and Karkat started in on his, peering at John and then down at the resume again. 

 

“So what, you helped them out on tour?”

 

“More….” John picked at a loose thread on his sweater. “More that when they went on tour, I stayed behind.”

 

“Why? Don’t like travel-” He glanced at the locations again. New York. New Jersey. Maryland. Even Ontario. That wasn’t it. “Okay, what are you not telling me?”

 

“I just don’t like travelling  _ with  _ people. You end up getting to know each other a little  _ too  _ well. You know what I mean?”

 

Karkat rather thought he did. He’d never thought he would do half the things he had for Gamzee before they’d been stuck on a tour bus together. Or forgive  _ any  _ of them - 

 

_ Stop thinking about it,  _ he reminded himself. He was moving on. He was  _ so  _ moving on. 

 

Still. “You can’t avoid going on tour with people just because you keep  _ sleeping  _ with them-”

 

“What?” squeaked John in a pitch so high Karkat thought he saw a crack appear in the water jug. He stuck a pinky in his ear and wiggled it around.

 

“No need to act  _ embarrassed.  _ Just get over it. Terezi’s not into babyfaces and I just got out of a relationship-”

 

“No, I mean, that’s not - that’s not wh-  _ is that what people assume? _ ”

 

“I dunno. I’m not people. But maybe.”

 

John buried his head in his hands. “Crud.”

 

Karkat stuck another forkful of waffle into his mouth, chewing slowly as he eyed John again. “...So it’s not drugs, it’s not libido. Anxiety?”

 

“I don’t skip tours because of  _ anxiety, _ ” John grumbled into his hands. “Do I look pathetic?”

 

“Do you want me to answer that?”

 

“No,” came the quiet reply. “Can we not talk about it?”

 

Karkat took another bite. “You know,” he said, mouth full, “there probably isn’t a whole lot you could say to shock me. You’re replacing a guy who got religious delusions about clowns and tried to throttle somebody with a bass string.” He decided to leave out exactly  _ who  _ it had been. He didn’t have a lot of plans for John to see him without a turtleneck.

 

John parted his fingers, a bright blue eye peering through. “You’re sure?”

 

“I mean. Fairly? If you’re an escaped Jehovah’s Witness or some shit like that, then fuck, you can have my bed for the night.”

 

“I’m not a Witness.”

 

“So what do you got? Horrible burn scars? Inverted nipples? A  _ third  _ nipple?”

 

John mumbled something quietly.

 

“-okay, I didn’t catch that. What?”

 

“Two X chromosomes,” John said, a tiny bit louder.

 

Beat.

 

“Wot?”

 

John’s hands slid down his face. “Two X chromosomes. And. All the. You know. Associated-”

 

“Yeah,  _ yeah,  _ I  _ follow _ \- but -  _ wot.” _

 

A dark flush was rising to John’s cheeks. “Thanks for the waffles. I’m gonna go-”

 

“The fuck? No, siddown.” 

 

John sat down. Karkat opened his mouth, and only managed silence.

 

“... _ What? _ ”

 

“I’m trying to completely break character and not be a offensive shitstain for once in like, twenty years. Give me a minute.”

 

A smile twitched at the corner of John’s mouth. “I appreciate the effort. But it’s not a big deal.”

 

“Wait, so it’s not a big deal, but you won’t tour cause of it? I’m lost now.”

 

“No, I won’t tour cause -” John shrugged. “I don’t like telling people.”

 

Karkat glanced down at himself with a twinge of self-awareness. “Can’t imagine why,” he mumbled. He didn’t even know why he was so flustered. It wasn’t like transness was a  _ new  _ thing for him. He’d had plenty of friends come out to him as trans. He was capable of  _ not  _ erupting into a fit of ‘What The Fuck’ when presented with the concept.

 

Except…

 

John glanced up at him from under his bangs again, and Karkat suddenly found his face getting very, very hot. Except this was the first time he’d had a guy he thought was  _ really cute  _ then come out to him. Not that he was admitting he found Mister Piano Doucheface cute. He was above that (and that voice was still in his head, demanding-)

 

Which was totally why his blood was confused about whether to rush to his face or in a more southerly direction. 

 

“It won’t be an issue for the band, I promise.” Karkat managed to stammer out.

 

“You seem hesitant about that.”

 

“Hesitant? I’m not hesitant.” More like, trying to stop his brain from going in three directions at once, because, he wasn’t any less gay for being attracted to a very very cute trans guy, but one couldn’t help but, when presented with a new situation, take it to all possible conclusions. One of them involved getting hit with a drumstick, which he could live with. The other was…  _ unexplored territory.  _ Slightly disorienting. 

 

But now John was looking disappointed, and Karkat resisted the urge to stab himself in the thigh with a fork to make himself  _ stop.  _ Because he’d gotten weird. And that was what he hated the most, whenever he came out. When things got weird.

 

“I’m.” He gulped. It was just to be respectful, he reminded himself. “I’m just processing that you’re. Pretty cute.”

 

“What, you expect trans guys not to be cute?”

 

“ _ That’s not what I meant! _ ”

 

“So you think trans guys are cute as like, a fetish thing!”

 

“Not that, eith-” A few seconds too late, Karkat caught the sparkle in John’s eye. “...Oh screw you. You and Terezi are going to get along  _ great. _ ”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah. She’s blind and loves using it to tell me our album covers are shitty.” Karkat cleared his throat. “Okay, you’re in. I’ll drive you back, you can sign all the stuff with Nitram and then we can do our first practice tonight if you have time.”

 

“Really? Cool!”

 

“Yeah, yeah.” Karkat threw a few bills on the table and somewhat stalked out of the restaurant, glad that his skin was dark enough to make blushes a little harder to see. 

 

In the parking lot, John caught his arm with a touch so delicate that Karkat couldn’t  _ imagine  _ how he played drums. He imagined they’d see. “I was kidding. Don’t worry.”

 

“A-about what?”

 

“Teasing you.” John smiled, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Besides, I like that you were surprised.”

 

“Really?”

 

“I mean, I want to pass. I want people to see me as - as I am. I like knowing I’ve done a good job.”

 

Karkat blinked, suddenly realizing John’s face was very close to his.

 

“Especially when it gets people flustered,” came the wry comment, and then suddenly John’s lips were on his, warm and soft and there for only a moment before they pulled away.

 

Karkat blinked again. It was like he couldn’t move. What kind of reality was this where he got smooched in the parking lot of a Waffle House by a new bandmate?  _ A fun one,  _ said his brain.

 

...Terezi was  _ so  _ going to yell at him.

 

\---

 

The tour was going well, Karkat reminded himself. It was their third one, and things were steadily improving. People liked their music. People liked the goth-punk thing; it was back in vogue, disillusioned youth looking for mirrors for their rage, their fury, their pain.

 

He prodded the bruise at the corner of his jaw with a wince. It was just a bruise. An unfortunate one, more purple than blue, but just a bruise nonetheless.

 

It was just, he’d never used concealer before. Every other time, he’d been able to pass it off as something else, or an accident. But a fist-sized ring of purple right next to his lips? That was going to be hard to explain away.

 

He tried smearing it on first, but it just looked like a splodge of Terezi-hued skin on top of his much, much darker face. Fuck his Iranian heritage. It was making this so much harder than it needed to be. He could probably blame it for being short, too. Gamzee hadn’t been  _ aiming  _ for him.

 

- _ yes, he was aiming for the wall, that was so much better, all because you told him not to show up high for any more practices- _

 

_ -fuck you for falling for this fuck you for acting out every sorry miserable stereotype that you’re supposed to be above, fuck you for being exactly the kind of fa- _

 

He stopped himself there. No point in going there. Next he’d ben having his overbearing asshat of a brother talking to him in his head again.

 

“KK? You in there?”

 

Terezi. He could ask her about the concealer. It wasn’t like she could  _ see  _ the bruise-

 

He opened the door of the van - and his hand flew up to cover his face. “K-Kanaya. What are you doing here?”

 

“I told you I was coming to your show,” she said brightly, but then her eyes flickered to the way his hand was cupped over his face. He tried to make it look more natural. “...Are you going to let me in?”

 

“What, to this smelly trailer? No way. Give me five minutes, okay?”

 

Kanaya stepped inside before he could stop her, towering above him in the tiny trailer. Terezi stepped in behind her.

 

“Okay, what’s going on? What am I missing?”

 

“Terezi,” Kanaya asked quietly, “what’s on Karkat’s face?”

 

Karkat felt the rage start to simmer in him like a locked-in, wretched ocean. What was he supposed to  _ do  _ with it? All this excess emotion that felt like holding a loaded gun in his hands.

 

“I cut myself shaving,” he snapped. “Now will you get out and let me fix it?”

 

“Karkat, I -”

 

“ _ Get out! _ ”

 

He slammed the door behind both of them, the urge to scream so high in his throat he thought he might throw up if he couldn’t get rid of it.

 

_ He wasn’t aiming for you. He wasn’t aiming for you. He wasn’t aiming for you. _

 

It wasn’t the punch that hurt. It was what Gamzee had whispered, right afterwards, barely even noticing that his fist had glanced off of Karkat’s jaw before embedding itself in the plaster. “He’s coming,” he’d whispered. “He’s still coming.”

 

And for five minutes - at least five minutes - he’d almost forgotten that Karkat was there, his pupils turned to pinpricks, looking into a world nobody else could see.

 

\----

 

“Listen,” Karkat said, once they were on the road and out of the Waffle House parking lot, “You’re cute. But, um -”

 

“Yeah?” John asked.

 

“I just...got out of a relationship.”

 

“I didn’t say it had to be a rel-”

 

“By got out, I mean I called the cops on him.” It felt weird to say. Even weirder to admit to, to a stranger. But it was one thing talking to another guy when you were both just men trying to puff out your chests and compare tailfeathers. It was another thing when you were both queer. Both hiding things.

 

John stayed quiet for a long time. “Must’ve been hard.”

 

“You have no fucking idea.”

 

“Is he - I mean -”

 

“Restraining order. For whatever good that’ll do.” Karkat found his hands were shaking, and at the next red light, clenched them into fists before putting them back on the steering wheel. It was easier to talk about this, he decided, when he didn’t actually have to look at the person in question. “Anyway. That’s all.”

 

John nodded in Karkat’s peripheral vision. “...Thanks.”

 

“For what?”

 

“For telling me.”

 

“Hey, you tell a secret, I tell a secret. So now you shut your trap and don’t mention it ever again.”

 

“Okay. I can do that.”

 

Karkat exhaled. Their tour started tomorrow. Fresh start. For everyone. 

 

They’d make it work. And besides… there was a big difference between ‘no’ and ‘not yet’. 


End file.
